


Debt-Price

by AirgiodSLV



Series: 28 Lotrips AUs Challenge [16]
Category: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-01
Updated: 2006-05-01
Packaged: 2019-07-20 12:40:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16137443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: Viggo scented the hunter as soon as he came across the ridge, sensed something wrong in the fall of the sand, a clever hiding place for a man beneath the blinding glitterfall of crystals, but by the time he spotted the shelter it was too late.





	Debt-Price

**Author's Note:**

> AU #1, for [](https://rawiyaparand.livejournal.com/profile)[rawiyaparand](https://rawiyaparand.livejournal.com/). Could hypothetically take place in the same general universe as part III of [A Casket of Mismatched Jewels](http://airgiodslv.livejournal.com/101699.html).

Viggo scented the hunter as soon as he came across the ridge, sensed something wrong in the fall of the sand, a clever hiding place for a man beneath the blinding glitterfall of crystals, but by the time he spotted the shelter it was too late.

He heard Elijah scream above him, dove for the ground and hit it running on two legs, already shifted back to human form in order to present a smaller target. When he looked up he saw Elijah’s shimmering blue-scaled body twist in agony, his wings folding sharply against his sides as he finally lost buoyancy and plummeted to the ground.

Viggo ran towards him, and saw the dragon-shape disappear a few lengths above the sand, not far off. Viggo shifted quickly and burst into flight, skimming the sand to stay out of the hunter’s crossbow-sights as he crossed the dune.

Elijah was in human-shape, as he’d expected, lying still and motionless against the bleak sand. Viggo grasped him in his talons with the care and practice of centuries of experience, and took the risk of flying higher to make it back to the shelter of the caves, beating his bronze wings hard to stir up the sand and cloud their retreat.

He doubted they would make it back without attracting the hunter’s notice, so he headed for a cave he knew was empty, and not his own. When he hit the ground with a gentle buffeting of air against his wings there was no trace of another living creature, only the clean desert scent of sand and stone.

He laid Elijah down on the ground gently and shifted to human-shape, not wanting to tear Elijah’s skin further with sharp talons and teeth. Kneeling to check the wounds, he cursed himself for choosing a cave without access to one of the underground streams. This one was good enough for hiding, but Elijah’s pale skin was streaked with blood and the sand clung to it, threatening infection if Viggo didn’t cleanse him soon.

“Elijah,” he murmured, and then said Elijah’s name in their tongue, almost impossible from a human-shaped mouth. Elijah didn’t stir, but his heart still beat beneath Viggo’s hand and he breathed, shallow and slow. The crossbow bolt had taken him through the chest, but missed his heart and lungs. There was a good chance he would live.

He caught the hunter’s scent long before he appeared, but they were trapped inside the cave with nowhere to go, and Elijah was dead weight. Viggo moved him to the back of the cave as gently as possible, then walked to the mouth to meet the human.

The man had the rough look of a hunter, unshaven and scruffy with wind-beaten clothes and sunburned skin. His crossbow was at the ready, a shaft notched and cocked which could kill Viggo in an instant if loosed. “Where is he?” the hunter asked. “I’m Dominic of Stone Reach, and I claim the blue as my rightful kill.”

“You didn’t kill him,” Viggo answered, and the man’s eyes widened and then narrowed at his low rumble, recognizing a dragon now and not a rival hunter. “There’s nothing to claim.”

“I hit him,” Dominic said plainly. “I can finish the job. Is he back there?”

Viggo moved when Dominic did, keeping his body between the hunter and Elijah’s hiding place. Dominic’s eyes narrowed further, and his jaw jutted out a bit, clearly determined to see this through. “Don’t get in my way,” he warned. “I can kill you just as easily as I can him.”

“Then why don’t you?” Viggo asked, well aware of the answer.

As he’d expected, it took some of the bluster out of Dominic’s pose, but the determination in his expression hadn’t lessened. “You’re worth nothing looking like one of us,” he said bluntly, spitting onto the sand covering the cave floor. “I can sell the blue for thousands, just the bones and scales alone.”

Viggo tensed, anger rising swiftly at Dominic’s casual words, but forced himself to remain calm. “Then he’s worth nothing to you either,” he answered evenly, and saw his words sink in, changing Dominic’s expression to sharp disappointment.

“He shifted?” Dominic took several steps forward, keeping the crossbow aimed so that Viggo had no choice but to reluctantly give way. He knew that as rare as their kind were, a hunter would be loath to shoot him in human-shape, but he doubted that this one would let a dragon stand in his way if he thought Viggo was lying to protect Elijah. As Elijah was in human-shape, there was no harm in letting him see.

“Damn,” Dominic said when Elijah’s body came into view, laid out next to the back wall. He moved around Viggo for a closer look, staying far enough back that his crossbow remained an effective weapon. He scrubbed his hand through his scraggly hair, obviously weighing his options.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Dominic said at last. “If he shifts back, I’ll take a few teeth, some scales…no more than I can carry. I’ll let him live.”

 _So that you can kill him later,_ Viggo finished silently, but didn’t say the words out loud. “He can’t,” Viggo said instead, low and even. “He’s unconscious, blood loss from your bolt. I can’t get him to wake.”

Dominic grunted, clearly displeased with the results of his hunt, and walked the rest of the way over to Elijah, pulling out a knife but keeping his crossbow trained on Viggo.

“Don’t come any closer,” he warned sharply. “I’ll kill him if I have to, so don’t start thinking about being clever.” He laid the blade against Elijah’s throat in threat, and set his crossbow down so that he could examine the wound. Viggo tensed in anger when Dominic stabbed two fingers into the wound in Elijah’s chest, a move which would have had Elijah screaming in agony if he’d been conscious, but his eyelids didn’t even flutter.

Dominic grunted, apparently satisfied, and touched Elijah’s face, examining his features. “Pretty,” he commented, which Viggo didn’t bother to respond to. Dominic sat back on his heels and eyed Viggo speculatively. “I’m taking him back with me,” he said finally. “He needs medical care, I can see that he gets it.”

“You’ll leave him here,” Viggo rumbled in warning. “We can take care of our own.”

“You can take care of this?” Dominic jerked his thumb at the blood caked on Elijah’s narrow chest, the deep hole where the bolt had penetrated. “I don’t think so. You can cross your talons and hope, maybe, but there’s no guarantee. Let me have him.”

“So you can kill him?” Viggo asked, sarcasm heavy in his voice. “Force him to shift back once he’s well so you can sell him piece by piece? I think not. Better he stays with us.”

“I can put this knife in him,” Dominic returned quietly. “I can open him so full of holes that he’ll never last the night with you, and then you’ll have no choice. Do you really want that?”

Viggo’s eyes strayed against his will to Elijah, so young yet, lying still and silent under the sharp edge of Dominic’s knife. If Dominic was as taken with Elijah as he seemed, there might be a chance, Elijah could recover and escape…but that was a fool’s hope. Hunters knew their prey, Dominic would keep Elijah bound and chained with his wings clipped until the fancy took him to kill his pet dragon, and Viggo would have no way of stopping him.

“Don’t harm him,” Viggo said, a hopeless plea, words without thought. “What good will it do you to keep him with you?”

Dominic cocked his head, and Viggo saw that his eyes kept slipping back to Elijah, drinking in his features. “He’s young yet, isn’t he?” Dominic mused. “Not done growing. I’ll keep his baby teeth when they fall out, and his scales as they shed. They’ll be worth the cost of keeping him, even if he does have a dragon’s appetite.”

There was more than that in his mind, but Viggo could hardly argue that he saw a different kind of lust in Dominic’s eyes than that for blood when he looked at Elijah. “You will owe him a debt-price,” he warned quietly. “You will owe it to all of us. And if any of us should catch you out here on our sands, you will pay it. If you kill him in captivity, his fate will be yours as well.”

“Fair enough,” Dominic said, and unstrung his crossbow, hanging it over his back and gathering Elijah into his arms, keeping the knife near Elijah’s vulnerable throat as a deterrent to Viggo taking any heroic action. “Until we meet again.”

Viggo stood aside as Dominic lifted Elijah from the sand and carried him out, fingers curling impotently at his sides. If he’d been in dragon-shape, he could have torn the man apart with his talons, bitten his head off with razor-sharp teeth. Instead he watched, helpless to interfere, as Dominic carried Elijah away. He could only pray that Elijah would survive, and one day return to them.

It was a slim hope, but it was all he had.


End file.
